Research team

The research team at International Research Centre on Cooperative Finance (IRCCF) of HEC Montréal includes a network of junior and senior researchers, active in different disciplines including economics, statistics, business intelligence, finance and policy.

Michel holds a Ph.D. in Administration from HEC Montreal. In his thesis, he explored topics in natural resources economics and carbon markets finance, using the tools of game theory and real options theory. He also graduated from the Statistical School of Abidjan as a Statistician-Economist Engineer (ENSEA). From 2002 to 2006, he served at the Credit Department of Togo’s Main Branch of the Central Bank of West African States. In particular, he was in charge of the Balance Sheet Data Office of non-financial firms. He has also served as a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at Bielefeld University in Germany, with a focus on innovation economics, industrial organization theory and numerical methods in economics. Michel has also held positions at UNICEF and Statistics Canada. He speaks French and English.

Nabila Ouchene holds a Masters in International Business from HEC Montreal, specializing in marketing. Throughout her studies, she has worked in a variety of fields: in a marketing agency, in research and development at HEC Montreal, as well as the Desjardins Financial Institution. Her thesis was on the international financial crisis of cooperative banks in 2008. Her research was based on a case study which compared Desjardins with Credit Agricole. Having lived in several countries, Nabila is passionate about international affairs and foreign policy. She is also an executive member of a non-profit organization in Montreal which helps to develop and educate young entrepreneurs in African communities. She speaks French, English and Arabic.

Renaud holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration – Finance from HEC Montréal, and is a Master student in Applied Financial Economics. His fields of specialization include analytics (finance), risk management as well as econometric modeling. He has studied at the University of Economics in Prague as part of a university exchange and held the position of Multimedia Manager in the HEChange association. Concerned about responsible investment, he was involved as an analyst in the Finance Sustainable Initiative (FSI) competition. With a great interest in out-of-school involvement, Renaud is currently an option representative for his program and a finance manager for the HEConnecte association. He is a musician and a photographer. He speaks French and English.

ASSOCIATE RESEARCHERS

Inmaculada Buendía Martínez holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration from the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain). She is also a specialist in cooperative management and an associate professor at the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Spain. Author of numerous scientific articles, books, and other publications, she is a member of various networks and international research projects. Her international expertise both in America and in Europe allowed her to collaborate directly with several research centres in Brazil, Canada, Colombia and Ireland, specializing in cooperativism. Her current interests focus on the contribution of cooperatives in local development, the policies for financial inclusion, the role of financial cooperatives in the international arena and corporate social responsibility in the banking industry. Inmaculada speaks Spanish, English, French and Portuguese.

Holder of a Ph.D. in Management Science at the University of Montpellier and a Masters in finance from Paris Dauphine University, Sandra is a temporary research and teaching assistant at Montpellier Management where she teaches finance, statistics and research methods. Her thesis focuses on comparing the strategies and performances of cooperatives with shareholder companies in different sectors: SMEs, the wine sector and financial institutions sector. She adopts an interdisciplinary perspective encompassing marketing and finance. Sandra has also participated in international academic conferences, presenting published scientific papers or those due for publication in peer review journals. Her collaboration with the IRCCF began with a research visit in 2015 and has subsequently grown stronger as a result of working on several projects with shared interests. She speaks Arabic, French and English.

Willem Pieter is a Research Fellow at the Financial Institutions and Prudential Policy Unit at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels and an associate researcher at the IRCCF. He holds a Masters in Finance from the VU University, in Amsterdam (Netherlands). Willem Pieter has (co)-authored several studies on EU and Near East banking regulation, as well as diversity in bank ownership and business models and, obstacles to growth and access to finance for small and medium-sized businesses. Willem Pieter has further extensive experience in gathering and analyzing data, e.g. product prices, executive compensation, financial performance, and structure. As an associate researcher of the IRCCF, Willem Pieter contributes to research on financial systems. He speaks Dutch, English and German.

Basma is an associate professor at the Peter B. Gustavson School of Business and the operations chair for the Centre for Social and Sustainable Innovation (CSSI). Her research examines the importance of currency risk in global equity markets and how exchange risk fluctuations affect the pricing of risk in stock markets around the world. She is also interested in issues of integration versus segmentation of financial markets, international diversification benefits into emerging markets, systemic banking crises and financial liberalization. Her past research has been published in leading business journals such as the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, the Journal of International Business Studies, the Journal of Empirical Finance, and Emerging Markets Review. Basma’s current research looks at the impact of financial system diversity on economic growth and macro-financial stability. Thanks to research funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and BCKDF, she’s working on developing a new global financial database that provides more comprehensive measures of institutional diversity and depth of national financial systems around the world. At Gustavson, Basma teaches international and corporate finance with an underlying foundation of organizational and functional sustainability to graduate and undergraduate students. Since 2011, Basma has also been teaching for the International Monetary Fund’s Institute for Capacity Development and contributes to various executive training courses offered by the Institute to mid-to-senior level government officials from African and Eastern European central banks and ministries of finance. Prior to that, she worked as a consultant for the World Bank, taught finance courses at McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management, and held various positions in the private sector in Tunisia and Europe. Since 2010, Basma has overseen the calculation of the carbon footprint of Gustavson faculty, staff and students, and has been actively engaged with CSSI in its ongoing efforts to reduce the school’s carbon footprint.

Holder of a Ph.D. in Business Intelligence specializing in Data Mining, Walid also holds a Masters in Mathematics from UQAM. After specializing in quantitative methods and their application to practical areas such as human resources management, business marketing and public health, he now focuses on the application of statistical methods of decision sciences in the field of management, particularly in finance. Holder of several scholarships and awards for his excellent academic record and the quality of his research projects, Walid is also a lecturer at HEC Montreal. As a statistician, he currently contributes to the analysis of financial systems in North America and Europe. He speaks Arabic, French and English.

Ndiouma is a Professor of Management Sciences at Ziguinchor University where, since 2012, he has worked as an associate researcher at the Laboratory for Research in Economics and Social Sciences. He has also been an associate researcher in the Faculty of Economics and Management (FASEG) at the Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar (Senegal) since 2006, as well as at the Centre for Analysis of Efficiency and Performance in Economics and Management (CAEPEM) of the University of Perpignan (France) since 2009. His research interests focus on microfinance and socially responsible investment.

Barry Quinn holds a Ph.D. from Queen’s University Belfast (Ireland). He is a Lecturer in Finance at Queen’s Management School and has nine years financial services industry experience. He is also a Fellow of the University of St Andrews Centre for Responsible Banking and Finance. His main area of research is the performance measurement of financial institutions, credit unions and football teams. Barry has published research on the recent performance of the Irish credit union sector, Japanese cooperatives and technology adoption traits of the Irish credit union sector. He is currently working with a team from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the importance of regulatory compliance and banking performance and is a Researcher for the Credit Union Advisory Committee which advises the Irish finance minister. His research output has been published in academic journals such as the European Journal of Finance, Financial Accountability & Management, Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, International Journal of Cooperative Studies and the IMF Working Paper Series.

Harol is management information analyst at Desjardins Group and associated statistician with the IRCCF. Harol has a Diploma in Statistics from the National University of Colombia and is also completing a Master of Management Intelligence at HEC Montréal. He has over ten years of experience in the development of statistical methods, business intelligence, data mining and segmentation. Previously, he worked in marketing and business intelligence research departments in large Colombian companies, in the field of telecommunications, advertising and media. He currently contributes to the analysis of US financial institutions. Harol speaks Spanish, English and French.

Jorge Ruiz is a physicist specializing in modeling financial data. Holder of a Masters in Economics at the Pontifical Xavierian University in Colombia and an official Masters in Quantitative Finance and Banking at the University of the Basque Country in Spain, Jorge is currently following the short graduate program in data analysis at HEC Montreal. Being a quantitative analyst, Jorge has accumulated many years of experience in the financial sector. His professional experience also includes statistics and econometrics teaching at university level. Jorge is dedicated to the data analysis of US financial institutions. He speaks French, English and Spanish.

Thuy Seran, Ph.D.Senior Associate Researcher Lecturer and Member of MRM Laboratory, University of Montpellier (France)thuy.seran@umontpellier.fr

Holder of a Ph.D. in Management Sciences specializing in Control from the University of Montpellier, Thuy is also a graduate of HEC Paris. After working for six years as an auditor at Ernst & Young, she is currently Associate Professor and Head of the higher university degree in Accounting and Management at the University of Montpellier. Her main area of research focuses on cooperative banks. Based on qualitative methodology, these studies incorporate a triangulation of data. She plays the lead role in the analysis of the cooperative bank network as a meta-organization. She also focuses on the governance aspect of banking information systems and the role of boundary objects in the organizational control system. With a team from the University of Montpellier, she also works on the theme of developing alliance strategies related to the hybrid form of these organizations. They highlight the specific types of management and key methods used in reducing internal tensions over coopetitive strategy within hybrid networks, like the French cooperative banks. Finally, these studies also cover the management of organizational innovation around virtual teams established in these banking networks.

Emanuele holds a Masters with Honors in International Development Studies from the Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA) and a Double Bachelor’s Degree in Geography and Economics from the Université Paris 1 – Panthéon Sorbonne. He works as an independent researcher associated with different entities and carries out research on issues ranging from financial economics to political geography, including spatial and development economics which remains his main areas of interest. He specializes in the study of social, economic and political dynamics in the European Union and its neighboring regions, including the Balkans, where he worked for three years as an international consultant in the field of statistics, and the Mediterranean Basin, where he conducts research activities under the Euro-Mediterranean Economists Association (EMEA). Emanuele favors an interdisciplinary approach to research, in general, and to economics, in particular, and it is with this mindset that he joined the IRCCF team as an associate researcher. He speaks fluent Italian, French, English and Spanish.